POLICE CHIEF WOULD LIKE TO USE DRONES

Sees benefits of aircraft equipped with camera, not armed with weapons

Murrieta Police Chief Michael Baray said last week that unmanned aerial vehicles would be a good tool to help his force of 86 police officers fight crime.

The comment was part of Baray’s presentation of the Police Department’s five-year strategic plan to the City Council.

Baray spoke for about two hours and talked about crime statistics and technological advances in law enforcement.

But the three minutes he spent on his hopes for a future Police Department aviation program with unmanned aircraft brought the word “drone” into the discussion.

It’s a buzzword both nationally, as there is a movement to prohibit the government from targeting U.S. citizens in drone strikes, and locally, in areas such as San Diego, where the American Civil Liberties Union is fighting a plan to test and operate drones in a designated flight zone over Southern California.

Two residents spoke about the Police Department’s plan, including Diana Serafin, who helped organize the successful fight to get red-light cameras banned in the city last year.

“I am against the use of drones in our city, and any other city in the United States,” Serafin said.

In a telephone interview after the council meeting, Serafin questioned whether there was enough crime in Murrieta to warrant the use of drones. And she expressed concern over civil liberties being eroded if the aircraft were later used to spy on American citizens, or shoot at them.

Baray doesn’t think that what he’s talking about is even a drone — claiming that the buzzword is a misnomer in this case.

“What I think has happened is people associate that with armed drones,” Baray said. “They’re completely two different concepts.”

He envisions an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, that is equipped with a camera and can be controlled with a hand-held set. It would be unarmed, Baray said, and not very large.

“It’s conceptual, but the ones I’m seeing are anywhere from 3- to 4-feet wingspans,” Baray said. “I’ve seen some even smaller than that.”

These UAVs would be used for overwatch, for instances when police are trying to apprehend a gunman on a building, or for search and rescue.

Armed strikes are the farthest thing from his mind, Baray said. He said this would be something that could ultimately give the city a tool that mimics a helicopter, which he saw the value of when he was an officer for the Los Angeles Police Department.

“My first 10 years of law enforcement was with one of the largest law enforcement agencies in Southern California,” Baray said. “And 40 years ago, the use of helicopter airships, it was every day. We had multiple airships up; we used them constantly. They’ve saved me personally.”